Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is developing a new connected car service that will enable drivers to earn cryptocurrency and make payments on the move.

The Smart Wallet technology allows credits to be earned if cars are enabled to automatically report useful road condition data such as traffic congestion or potholes to navigation providers or local authorities.

Drivers could redeem these for rewards such as coffee, or conveniently use them to automatically pay tolls, parking fees and for smart charging electric vehicles.

Russell Vickers, Jaguar Land Rover software architect, said: “The connected car technologies we are developing will be transformative and truly turn your Jaguar or Land Rover into a third space, in addition to your home or office. In the future an autonomous car could drive itself to a charging station, recharge and pay, while its owner could choose to participate in the sharing economy - earning rewards from sharing useful data such as warning other cars of traffic jams.”

JLR has partnered with the IOTA Foundation to harness ‘distributed ledger’ technologies to make and receive these payments. Unlike other similar systems, due to its structure, it requires no transaction fee to operate and over time transactions will get faster across the entire network, forecast to include some 75 billion connected devices by 2025. Drivers could also top-up the ‘Smart Wallet’ using conventional payment methods.

The technology is being trialled in several vehicles, including the Jaguar F-Pace and Range Rover Velar.

The research forms part of Jaguar Land Rover’s Destination Zero strategy which aims to achieve zero emissions, zero accidents and zero congestion. Part of reaching this target is developing a shared economy where the vehicle plays an integral role as a data gatherer in the smart city of the future.

 

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